Powerful Partnerships: The Sterling and Mark Greenberg Real Estate
The Sterling
July 10, 2014 — The building was just known as 209 East 56th Street in 1989 when Mark Greenberg Real Estate (MGRE) was hired as manager; it wasn’t until years later, when the board decided that a building name would help sales, that the co-op was rechristened The Sterling. The name’s greatest significance was in how it was devised: The board involved every shareholder, using a survey to choose a name.
That’s not unusual for the hands-on board, whose members believe in the personal touch. In 1991, the 107-unit property between Second and Third Avenues, was managed by a large firm that was “nickel-and-diming us, and that would drive me crazy,” says Mary Ann Savarese, who first served as the head of the tenants’ group and continued on as the president, a post she still holds. “We needed a change.”
It was a transitional time. In the 1980s, everything old was new. “It was the wild wild west in terms of co-ops and condos,” recalls Steve Greenbaum, the director of management at Mark Greenberg Real Estate, which was eventually hired as manager because of the firm’s willingness to adapt to the times. “Everyone was learning about the differences between buyers and renters, between co-ops and condos, between sponsors and investors,” says Greenbaum. “There were a lot of different categories in those days.”
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Savarese had worked as a commercial real estate broker, and currently works with both Greenbaum and manager James Cotter, who has handled the property for years. During that time, the five-person board has learned to listen. When shareholders complained that they weren’t getting enough financial information, the board members began staging mid-year shareholder meetings to get the data out, explaining the needs for maintenance increases with financial spreads and pie charts. They successfully co-opted their critics. That was a technique the directors learned from Greenbaum.
“A shareholder would get up at the annual meetings and say the building has to be redecorated, the outside needs more plants – something needs to be done at the building,” recalls Savarese, “and that would get our backs up, because that’s what we would work on but we could only do so much. Steve knew a better way to handle those complaints. He would get up and say, ‘That’s a great idea. Why don’t you form a committee and you come back to us with suggestions?’” Either they would form the committee and do something positive for the co-op, or they would stop complaining. It was essentially “put up or shut up.”
Observes Savarese: “We didn’t think of it at the time, but it made perfect sense. That was all Steve.”
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